But there were few conflicts in the weeks that passed after their departure from Flay Creech, and eventually everyone settled into a comfortable routine and developed a complacency with life aboard ship. It wasn’t until one of the Wing Riders finally sighted the island of Shatterstone that everything began to change.
It was the Wing Rider, Gill, patrolling in the late afternoon on Tashin, who sighted Shatterstone first. The expedition had been looking for it for several days, alerted by Redden Alt Mer, who had taken the appropriate readings and made the necessary calculations. An earlier sighting of a group of three small islands laid out in a line corresponded to landmarks drawn on the map and confirmed that the island they sought was close.
Walker was standing with the Rover Captain in the pilot box behind Furl Hawken, who was in command of the helm that afternoon, discussing whether they needed to correct their course at sunrise on the following day, when Gill appeared with the news. All activity stopped as the ship’s company hurried to the rails, and Big Red swung the Jerle Shannara hard to the left to follow the Wing Rider’s lead.
Finally, the Druid thought as they sailed toward the setting sun. The prolonged inactivity, the seductive comfort of routine, and the lack of progress bothered him. The men and women of the expedition needed to stay sharp, to remain wary. They were losing focus. The only solution was to get on with things.
But when the island came into view, he felt his expectations fade. Whereas Flay Creech had been small and compact, Shatterstone was sprawling and massive. It rose out of the Blue Divide in a jumble of towering peaks that disappeared into clouds and mist and fell away at every turn into canyons thousands of feet deep. The coastline was rugged and forbidding, almost entirely devoid of beaches and shallows, with sheer rock walls rising straight out of the ocean. The entire island was rain-soaked and lush, heavily overgrown by trees and grasses, tangled in vines and scrub, and laced with the silver threads of waterfalls that tumbled out of the mist into the emerald green landscape below. Only at its peaks and on its windswept cliff edges was it bare and open. Birds wheeled from their aeries and plummeted in white flashes to the sea, hunting food. Below the cliff walls, the surf crashed against the rocks in long, rolling waves and turned to milky foam.
Walker had the Jerle Shannara circle the island twice while he noted landmarks and tried to get a feel for the terrain. A thorough search of Shatterstone by ordinary methods would take weeks, maybe even months. Even then, they might not discover the key if it was buried deep enough in those canyons. He found himself wondering which of the three horrors of Ryer Ord Star’s vision guarded this key. The eels would have been the mouths that could swallow you whole. That left something that was blind but could find you anyway or something that was everything and nothing and would steal your soul. He had hoped the seer would dream again before they reached Shatterstone, but she had not. All they had to work with was what she had given them before.
He watched the rugged sweep of the island pass away below, thinking that whatever he decided, it would have to wait for morning. Nightfall was close upon them, and he had no intention of landing a search party in the dark.
But he might consider sending down Truls Rohk, he thought suddenly. The shape-shifter preferred the dark anyway, and his instincts for the presence of magic were nearly as keen as the Druid’s.
The Wing Riders landed on an open bluff high above the pounding surf on the island’s west coast and, leaving their Rocs tethered, began a short exploration of the area. They found nothing that threatened and determined that it was safe enough for them to remain there for the night. No attempt would be made to journey inland until morning. Redden Alt Mer anchored the airship some distance away on an adjoining bluff, fixing the anchor lines in place and letting the ship ride about twenty feet off the ground. Again, no one would leave the ship until morning, and a close watch would be kept until then. Darkness was already beginning to settle in, but it appeared that the coastal skies would remain clear. With the illumination provided by a half-moon and stars, it would be easy to see anything that tried to approach.
After dinner was consumed, Walker called his small group of advisers together in Redden Alt Mer’s cabin and told them his plan for the coming day. Though he didn’t say so, he had abandoned for the moment the idea of using Truls Rohk. Instead, he would fly with one of the Wing Riders over the peaks and into the canyons in an attempt to locate the hidden key using his Druidic instincts. Because the key had such a distinctive presence and would likely be the only thing like it on the island, he had a good chance of determining its location. If it were in a place he could reach without endangering the Wing Rider and his Roc, he would retrieve it himself. But the canyons were narrow and not easily navigated by the great birds with their broad wingspans, so retrieval might have to be undertaken by the ship’s company.
Everyone agreed that the Druid’s plan seemed sensible, and the matter was left at that.
The following morning, the dawn a bright golden flare on the eastern horizon, Walker set off with Hunter Predd and Obsidian to conduct a methodical sweep of the island’s west coast. They searched all day, dipping into every canyon and defile, soaring over every bluff and peak, crisscrossing the island from the coastal waters inland so that nothing was missed. The day was sunny and bright, the weather fair, the winds light, and their search progressed without difficulty.
By sunset, Walker had found exactly nothing.
He set out again the next day with Po Kelles, seated behind the whip-thin Wing Rider on his gray-and-black-dappled Roc, Niciannon. They rode the back of a strong wind south along the most forbidding stretch of the island’s shoreline, and it was here just after midday that Walker detected the presence of the key. It was buried deep in a coastal valley that opened off a split between a pair of towering cliffs and ran inland into heavy jungle for better than five miles. The valley was unnavigable from the air, and after ascertaining the approximate location of the key, Walker had Po Kelles fly them back to the airship. Postponing any further effort for the day, he asked Redden Alt Mer to move the Jerle Shannara to a bluff just above the valley he intended to explore at dawn, and they settled in for the night.
He waited until everyone but the watch was asleep and then summoned Truls Rohk. He had neither seen nor spoken with the shape-shifter since he had come aboard, although he had detected the other’s presence and knew him to be close. Walker stood at the back of the ship, just down from the aft rise where the Elven Hunter on sentry duty peered out at the jungled island darkness, and sent out a silent call to Rohk. He was still looking for the shape-shifter when he realized Rohk was already there, crouching next to him in the shadows, virtually invisible to anyone who might be looking.
“What is it, Druid?” Rohk hissed, as if the summoning were an irritation.
“I want you to explore the valley below before it gets light,” Walker answered, unruffled. “A quick search, no more. There is a key, and the key feels like this.”
He produced the one he carried and let the other touch it, hold it, feel its energy.
Truls Rohk grunted and handed it back. “Shall I bring it to you?”
“Do not go near it.” Walker found the other’s eyes and held them. “It isn’t that you couldn’t, but the danger might be greater than either of us suspects. What I need to know is where it is. I’ll go after it myself in the morning.”
The shape-shifter laughed softly. “I would never deny you a chance to risk your life over mine, Walker. You think so much less of the risk than I do.”